Seas of South Africa (8 page)

A hundred miles further south, I stopped again. Where the Ligonha River emptied into the sea, according to my map, there wasn't a town or city, just a river basin, and I doubted the pirates would bother to stop there, unless of course they knew I was there. To be extra careful, I sailed the last twenty miles submerged, just in case they had somehow gotten their
hands on radar more sophisticated than mine, which was pretty unlikely. And when I surfaced—two hundred feet from shore—I brought the portal only eight inches above water, leaving the hull submerged, so that we'd be nearly invisible by radar and by sight. You would have to scan the shore with a high-powered telescope to see the portal, and even then you might not know it was a submarine. And who would ever be looking
that
closely?

This time I decided to bring Little Laura along. I put a piece of orange inside her cage, and when she went in for it, I shut the door. I inflated the kayak, took Hollie, the money, the cage, the binoculars, and paddled to the beach. Seaweed was already there.

It was a pretty river basin. The river cut several trenches through the sandy soil, making little islands out of the beach. The sand was golden, the trees bright green, and the water in the river clear and blue. There was no one around, which suited me perfectly. I pulled the kayak onto the beach, and carried the money and cage upstream along the river to a good spot for cleaning.

Hollie ran wild as usual. Seaweed investigated the riverbank for things to eat. Little Laura looked all around from inside her cage, but wouldn't come out. I opened the door and she poked her head out, but stayed inside. She stared at Hollie as if waiting for him to come and carry her around, but there was no way on earth he would give up his freedom on the beach to offer her a piggyback ride. I settled down on
the riverbank with a brush and soap and started scrubbing the money.

Who knew cleaning money would be so much work? I couldn't help wondering how it got so dirty in the first place. Had it passed through so many dirty hands? But the money wasn't old. Most of it looked fairly new. Had it sat around in a room with sour milk that slowly turned into rotten cheese? But it wasn't exactly a cheese smell; it was stinkier than that. Then I imagined even worse things. Had the money been buried in the ground for a while, with a dead body or two? Stop thinking like that, I told myself, it was just dirty. But the more I handled the money, the dirtier it felt, and the harder I scrubbed it.

There was a fresh breeze coming across the land. This was very welcome to me because the smell of the money was making me sick. I raised my head to look at the sea, but couldn't see it. I had to stand up. When I did, the horizon was clear. No one knew we were here. I looked around. This was such a pleasant place; it was hard to believe that people were taken from here and sold into slavery. But they were. They went mostly to the Caribbean and America, but other places, too. What really surprised me was that the slave traders didn't have to come inland to raid the villages themselves; they were able to buy the people from tribal chiefs. The chiefs sold their own people, or people from neighbouring tribes, to the traders. I didn't know which would be worse: being kidnapped by strangers, or being sold by your own people.
Probably being sold by your own people. The reason was the same in both cases—for money.

As I scrubbed each bill, turned it over, and scrubbed the other side, I thought of the family who had run away from me when they saw the money. Why had they been so afraid? Money was just money. It wasn't evil. I stood up and scanned the horizon again. As I stared at the vast hazy ocean, I imagined old wooden sailing ships coming in and dropping anchor. Sailors would come ashore in rowboats, greet the tribal chiefs, and hand over money for slaves . . . I stopped. That was it. I remembered watching shows about the pirates in Somalia. It was the tribal chiefs who forced the young men into piracy—their own people—just as their ancestors had sold their own people to slave traders. No wonder people would be afraid of money around here. In their past, and in their present, their own chiefs were willing to trade them, or force them into a violent and dangerous life, just to make money. Now I understood why the sight of someone washing blood off money would have been frightening to a poor local family.

I cleaned another thousand dollars. My hands were tired now, and a little sore. The brush was rubbing the skin away from my fingernails and making them bleed. What a nuisance. On the other hand, I was a thousand dollars richer. I stood up to stretch my back and take another peek at the horizon. It was clear. Then, I looked at the portal of the sub. Strangely, it looked a little fatter than before. How could that
be? I grabbed the binoculars and looked more closely. Directly behind the portal, near the horizon, was a motorboat, and it was coming fast. They had found us.

I grabbed the money and Little Laura's cage. “Hollie! We have to go! Hollie?”

I didn't see him. Where was he? I ran to the kayak. “Hollie!”

The pirates were only three or four miles away. They would be here in minutes. I dropped the cage and money into the kayak and pushed it into the water. Where was Hollie? We had to go
now
. If the pirates caught us, we were dead. “Hollie!”

He didn't come. I couldn't see Seaweed, either. I started to feel panic. I hated to go without Hollie, but would have to come back and find him later; otherwise, we'd both be dead. So, I paddled to the sub, opened the hatch, and carried Little Laura and the money inside. Then I climbed back out. There was a sound of a rifle shot in the distance, but it was far away. I raised the binoculars. It was the pirates all right. They were crowded in the boat, with guns in their arms. One of them was aiming, but couldn't hit us from so far away, especially from a moving boat. I pulled up the anchor and prepared to shut the hatch. Now only my head was showing. I took a glance at the beach, and then I saw Hollie. He was in the water, swimming towards the sub. But he was too slow. “Hurry! Hollie! Hurry!”

There was no way he could make it here in time. I looked at the pirates. We had maybe a minute and a half at most. With a horrible sinking feeling, I climbed out, slipped into the
water, and swam to Hollie as fast as I could. I grabbed him by the back of his neck and struggled back. There were more rifle shots now, and they were louder. Instead of climbing up the portal and exposing my body, I slithered inside like a snake, headfirst, holding Hollie in one hand. I went in upside down, bracing myself with the ladder, and let Hollie drop the last couple of feet. I closed the hatch, raced to the panel board, and hit the dive and battery switches all at the same time. Before we went under, I heard a bullet strike the portal.

I hoped they didn't have grenades. If they did, they could cause us a lot of trouble as we went underneath them. The water was so shallow they would be able to follow us easily for a mile from the beach, until the sea floor dropped. And that is what they did. They followed us out, shooting the whole time. I tracked them with sonar, and could hear the faint sounds of gunshots. They were shooting into the water, even though it was useless for them. The bullets lost most of their power once they hit the water, and couldn't hurt the steel hull anyway. They must have been wild with anger. Thank heavens they didn't have grenades. Still, I sat at the control panel and shivered. It had been way too close. If I hadn't looked for them just then, we'd probably be dead now. I just couldn't take any more chances like that. We would sail away from here now, once we had picked up Seaweed. We would sail far away, and never come back.

Three miles from shore, I surfaced to periscope depth and scanned the water. The pirates were racing in circles, trying
desperately to find us. I watched them for an hour. Sooner or later, they would get frustrated and give up. Then we could go back and find Seaweed. He could spot the periscope for miles from the sky. After we picked him up, we'd sail hundreds of miles away before we set foot on shore again. I didn't think the pirates would follow us that far. They couldn't follow us forever.

Chapter Ten

HUNDREDS OF MILES
south, just south of Maputo, we were sitting in the water a few miles offshore. It was the middle of the afternoon, sunny and hot, with a very slight breeze passing over the open hatch. I was making pancakes, with raspberry jam and maple syrup. I could finally flip a pancake in the air and catch it in the pan without breaking it or dropping it on the floor. Seaweed, Hollie, and Little Laura were standing by my feet, watching every move, and hoping I would drop one. The air was a little smoky. The sub smelled a bit like a restaurant, which was a huge improvement.

I had just sat down and taken the first bite when the radar
beeped. I glanced over and saw the light blinking on the screen. There had been surprisingly few vessels in the water all along the Mozambique coast, and I had gone out of my way to avoid them these past few days. But this vessel wasn't coming from the north or south, it was coming from shore.

I put my plate down, picked up the binoculars, climbed the ladder, and scanned the water. There was nothing there. Not a thing. That was weird. I ducked my head inside and listened. The radar was still beeping. So, I looked more carefully, drawing the binoculars along the shoreline very slowly. Nope. There was nothing there. What the heck?

I jumped back inside and took another look at the radar screen. Whatever had been three miles away from us was now just a mile. The only thing that could move that fast was an airplane, or a helicopter. But I never heard one. I raced back up the portal and scanned the sky. Yup. There it was.

It was sort of an airplane. I couldn't tell if it was really old, or really new. There was someone in it, but he wasn't covered. He was pedalling with his legs, and swinging levers with his arms. There was a small engine in front, a propeller, and a pair of wings that looked like they were made of canvas. In the centre was a bicycle. He was pedalling as if he were in a race. But he was losing. The plane was coming down. He was going to hit the water.

At first he didn't see me, until I waved with both of my arms over my head. And then he did. He made an awkward turn, losing more height, and steered towards us. But he
wasn't going to make it. I couldn't hear his engine because it wasn't running. He was pedalling faster and faster, trying to stay aloft. The bicycle must have been hooked up to the propeller, and it was spinning, but it wasn't enough to keep him in the air.

I watched him drift closer. He looked frantic. I wondered if he could swim. I jumped inside, switched on the engine, and motored towards him. Just as I poked my head out of the portal again, he plunged into the sea. He dropped like a dead bird.

His plane didn't sink right away, and he was clinging to it like somebody who couldn't swim. As we approached, I cut the engine and drifted to a stop. He was staring at me with a mix of panic and curiosity. He was a few years older than me. “Are you okay,” I yelled?

He didn't answer. He was trying to untangle himself. That was a good idea; his plane was going to sink. I grabbed the lifebuoy. “Do you want this?”

He looked up. “Is that a diesel-electric submarine?”

“Yes.”

He wrestled free of his contraption, but never took his eyes away from the sub. “Where are you from?”

“Canada.”

“Canada? What are you . . . ?”

“Can you swim?”

“No.” He said it as if it was not important. I threw the lifebuoy at him. “Here. Pull it over your head and I'll haul you over.”

He pulled the lifebuoy over one shoulder and began thrashing at the water. I yanked hard on the rope. He tried to swim, in a panicky sort of way, but it was as if he didn't even know what water was. His eyes were wild with panic, like an animal, yet he couldn't seem to take them away from the sub. It was the worst attempt at swimming I had ever seen. He wouldn't have gone anywhere but straight down if I hadn't been pulling on the rope.

By the time he reached a handle and climbed halfway up, he was exhausted. I waited for him to catch his breath. When he did, he continued talking, as if he had never stopped. “Are you burning diesel fuel?”

“Of course. It's a diesel engine.”

“You don't have to, you know. You can convert it.”

“Convert it? Convert what?”

“Your engine. You don't have to burn fossil fuels anymore. You can burn vegetable fat.”

“Vegetable fat? Are you serious?”

“Absolutely. My engine burns vegetable fat. It's a lot better for the environment. Why would you burn diesel when you can burn vegetable fat? It's cleaner, and it's renewable. We have to stop burning fossil fuels. We're killing the planet. And we haven't got much time left.” He bent over and gasped for air. “Will you tow my plane to the shore?”

I shook my head. “Sorry. I can't.”

“Why not?”

“Because it sank.”

“No, it didn't . . .” He turned around. “Oh, no! Noooooooo!”